After the Fall

by E. C. Myers

  Now they knew what must have destroyed Lower Cairn. And it was here to finish the job.

  The Gray children shouted. Velvet snapped out of it and watched as the family scrambled back into the cave.

  “No!” Coco shouted.

  The Goliath advanced toward the stream. Coco fired her gun at it, but it didn’t seem fazed at all. It slid down the slope, crushing the cave entrance and the people inside.

  Velvet dropped to her knees. “Oh no. No,” she said. The halberd fell to the ground and faded away.

  Yatsuhashi ran toward the Goliath, sword raised.

  “Hold on,” Fox sent. He looked up.

  A Bullhead descended toward them, firing heavy artillery at the Goliath, pushing it back. Professor Port crouched in the open door of the transport, firing his blunderbuss at the Grimm around Velvet and Fox.

  “Get in!” he shouted.

  “Coco, Yatsuhashi, we have to go,” Fox sent.

  Velvet shook her head, climbing to her feet.

  “No, we have to fight.” She flipped through her camera, searching for the right weapon that could solve everything.

  “We have to leave,” Fox sent. He pulled on her arm. “We have to live.”

  She shoved him away. “No! We can still save them. We—”

  “They’re gone,” Fox said. “I can’t—I can’t sense them anymore.”

  Velvet choked back a sob and followed him.

  “I don’t retreat,” Coco said. “I’ll hold them off.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Fox said.

  Yatsuhashi winced. He looked at Coco.

  “Save it. There’s no convincing her,” Yatsuhashi said.

  “Thank you.” Coco started to head back toward the fight. Then she felt herself swept up in Yatsuhashi’s arms.

  “Yatsuhashi! Put me down!”

  Yatsuhashi winced as Coco’s blows landed hard on his shoulders—she was too strong for him to hold on to for long. He ran toward the Bullhead, which laid down covering fire that cut through the scattering Ursai. The Goliath had turned and was walking away slowly, as if they weren’t even worth paying attention to anymore.

  Yatsuhashi hurled Coco into the airship and jumped in after her. As it flew up and banked toward home, they looked down at the ruins of Lower Cairn.

  “We failed,” Velvet said.

  From inside the wagon racing across the desert, Velvet watched as the blue sky turned a sickly orange-gray. The sun was a dull bright orb overhead. The van shuddered as the wind rocked it. The sand outside was undulating. It drifted across the peaks of dunes around them, rising and whirling in flurries around their group. It was magical. It was terrifying.

  “We aren’t going to make it,” Slate said.

  “We will,” Coco said.

  Slate tapped the dashboard. “We’re almost out of fuel. We don’t have enough to get to the canyon. We’ll have to lash the vehicles together and shelter inside them.” She squinted. “But this looks like a really bad one.”

  They trundled along while they considered all their options, which seemed fairly limited.

  “What if we could get above the sand?” Velvet asked.

  “You have an airbus on call we don’t know about?” Coco asked.

  Velvet pointed. “I was thinking about climbing that plateau.”

  “I know this desert, kid, and there are no plateaus in these parts,” Slate said.

  “Then what is that?”

  Yatsu looked in the direction Velvet was gazing. It was hazy out there, visibility dropping as the air filled with sand. He shaded his eyes and waited for a clearer view.

  “She’s right, there’s something out there. It’s huge, with a flat top, and four, no—five outcroppings,” Yatsu said. He blinked. “But … I think it’s moving.”

  Slate pulled a pair of binoculars from a compartment near her seat. Velvet noticed a pistol tucked in the back before she closed the door.

  “Where?” Slate asked.

  Velvet pointed.

  Slate’s mouth fell open.

  “Well, I’ll be. That’s no plateau! That’s a flatback slider!”

  “A what?” Coco asked. “You mean it’s alive?”

  “Alive, and very rare in these parts. I’ve only seen it once in my life, when I was a little girl. From a distance. It could even be the same one.”

  “But what is it?” Velvet asked.

  “A sand turtle,” Slate said. “One big enough to ride on.”

  “You mean a tortoise?” Yatsuhashi asked.

  Slate gave him a look. “If I’d meant a tortoise, I would have said tortoise, young man. That there is a turtle. It’s not walking on the sand, it’s swimming in it. And it looks like it’s trying to get away from the sandstorm, same as us. It’ll travel for a bit and then retract its head and wait it out. It’s so big, it will hardly notice it, but the sand has shaped it, too, over time, just like the rocks and canyons.”

  The sandstorm was coming from the other side of the turtle, driving it northeast, along the same path they were taking.

  “You said it’s big enough to ride on?” Velvet asked.

  Yatsu stared at her. “You’re bonkers,” he said.

  “We’re desperate,” Coco corrected him. “And I happen to think this is a terrific idea.”

  “Me too,” Slate said. “The sandstorms typically reach around fifty to sixty feet—we could ride above the storm easily.”

  “And how high up is the back of that turtle?”

  “Probably one hundred feet.” Slate fell silent, considering. Then she yanked the wheel, angling the van to the right. “We might have enough fuel to intercept it, and I’ve always wanted to see one up close.”

  The other vans adjusted course to follow them, a long line stretching behind them, sending up a sand cloud of their own. Velvet had to admire Slate—her people were following her without question. Velvet glanced at Coco. Coco smiled.

  “Are we doing this?” Velvet asked.

  “Oh. We are doing this!” Coco said.

  They gradually caught up to the turtle. When they were running on fumes, they passed in front and clambered out of the vehicle to wait for it. The rest of the caravan joined them, gaping at the humongous creature as they crawled from the vans.

  It was slow-moving, maybe going ten miles an hour. It was hard work swimming through sand, even with a storm at your back.

  Carmine approached with Gus; they’d been traveling in the van behind Slate’s.

  “What are we doing? And what fresh headache is that?” Carmine gazed at the turtle drifting toward them with a mixture of awe and terror.

  Slate caught her up on their plan.

  Gus’s eyes went wide. “You’re climbing it?”

  “We’re climbing it,” Coco said.

  “Crazy enough to work. Who’s going up first?” Carmine asked. “Any of us could make it up that thing without much trouble, but what about them?” She swept a hand out to include the townspeople clustering and muttering. The sand was swirling around their ankles now, already piled up around the wheels of the wagons. They wouldn’t be moving them anytime soon, even if they had enough fuel.

  “Good point. We’ll have to send someone up to secure some lines to get everyone else to the top,” Coco said. “Are these turtles dangerous?”

  “Now you ask. I don’t think so. I hear they’re only dangerous if they see you,” Slate said. “Fortunately they have terrible vision, and they usually ignore tiny, short-lived things like us. She may be as old as the Great War.”

  “So this will work,” Coco said.

  “I’ve heard of some people who camp on them for days or weeks. There’s no better way to travel through the desert, if you’re lucky enough to find one. Just seeing one is considered a good omen.”

  “We can use a good omen right now,” Coco said.

  “I’ll go first,” Velvet cut in.

  Coco considered her. Velvet braced herself for the protest, the insistence that she go instead.

&nb
sp; But Coco grinned. “Go.”

  Velvet loaded her belt with tough but light ropes that had been intended for tying the vans together for shelter. If all went well, they would be much safer above the storm.

  She bounced on her heels, getting ready to climb as the front of the turtle slowly slid past them. Slate was right, it never even looked down or took notice of them. They were basically as insignificant as bugs.

  “You sure about this, V?” Yatsu asked.

  She nodded. “Give me a boost?”

  “You got it.”

  Yatsu stepped back from the turtle a bit and drew his sword. He held it in both hands and slung the broad, flat side of the blade over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

  “Good luck,” Coco said.

  “It’s supposed to be good luck to see one, isn’t it?” Velvet said. “So climbing it must be really lucky.”

  “I hope so.”

  Gus smiled up at Velvet. “I’m worried, but I think you can do it.”

  “Thanks.” She ruffled Gus’s curly hair, and he ducked his head.

  Then she jumped up onto Yatsu’s shoulder and walked along his greatsword. She crouched on the flat blade close to the tip.

  “Ready!” Velvet called.

  Yatsu swung, low and then high—and fast. As his arms fully extended with the sword pointing straight out, Velvet launched herself, using the momentum to carry herself twenty-five feet up. She landed on one of the turtle’s massive flippers.

  Already a quarter of the way up, Velvet thought. Thanks, Yatsu.

  She could barely tell that she and the turtle were moving but when she looked down, she saw her friends following along beside it at a brisk pace. They wouldn’t be able to keep that going forever, and wind was still picking up. Velvet’s face itched as sand brushed against it.

  The giant flipper she stood on was firm. She knelt and pressed her hand against it. It was definitely warm and alive, but the creases in the tough skin, which had the texture of a rubber tire, were filled with sand and rocks. The sand turtle was the color of the desert it swam in, rich oranges and yellows and reds. She felt the powerful strength of the animal as its muscles worked to propel it through the shifting earth below.

  As Velvet raced up the flipper, she thought that racing up a gargantuan turtle swimming in the desert had to be the most exciting thing she had ever done. Her speed carried her to the lip of the turtle’s shell. She grabbed it, turned herself around, and then flipped her legs up and over so she was standing on the edge.

  The obsidian shell was worn down here, almost glasslike. She was maybe forty feet up now, still on the edge of where sandstorms would have blasted it smooth. The dim sun glinted off it, and Velvet saw her image reflected in the surface, warped like in a fun house mirror, so she appeared shorter and wider—a cartoonish version of herself.

  It was slippery, so she had to jump to catch a handhold; higher up, the shell was pockmarked and pitted, the black-and-gray coloration around faded by exposure to the sun. Then there were natural ridges and joints that made it straightforward but arduous work to climb.

  Slow and steady now, she thought. Falling would not only likely injure her but also delay her progress, and they were nearly out of time.

  She was above the storm line now, and the air felt lighter and fresher than it did below. The full heat of the sun returned, and the sky was once again blue. She glanced down as she moved upward and couldn’t see the ground through the thick soup of hot wind and sand swirling below her.

  And then she crested the shell and sprawled on her back for a moment, catching her breath. She sat up and looked out at the desert. On one side, the thick, cauliflower clouds of sand were almost upon them. Below her, the ground was still obscured in a dismal layer of sand and dust. She hoped her friends and the townspeople were okay.

  And farther out, the desert looked as it usually did, untouched and unbothered by anything happening here and now. The desert was old and it would outlast all of them, all of the people Velvet knew or would ever know. It wasn’t uncaring; it was indifferent. Everything that they held dear and struggled for, the battles with Grimm, with other kingdoms, with Cinder Fall and the White Fang and their mysterious allies—none of that mattered to Vacuo, the desert or the creatures who roamed it.

  Velvet found the thought sobering. It gave her some perspective on what had happened at Beacon and ever since. No matter what she did, whether she lived or died, the desert would always abide.

  But it all mattered to her, and the people below who were counting on her. She wandered the sun-bleached surface of the shell, as flat and stable as any plateau, and blissfully free of sand. Astonishingly, there were abandoned tents here, evidence of campfires, and even trash. Something must have happened to the people who left this stuff up here, as Vacuans were typically more respectful and less wasteful than anyone else.

  She poked her head into one of the tents and grimaced. She had found the last people to scale this monstrous beast: a couple lying on worn pallets, reduced to skeletons by birds or insects, still wearing the threadbare clothing they had died in.

  Velvet closed the flap and backed away. She tripped over something.

  “Clumsy,” she said. But what had she tripped over?

  The center of the shell had a number of pitons driven into it. Perfect! she thought.

  She hoped it hadn’t hurt the turtle whenever that was done, and she hoped it wouldn’t hurt if she used them to secure her ropes.

  She tied off the ends of two long lines and then returned to the edge. She threw them over the side and watched as they arced out and tumbled through the rising layer of blowing sand. She felt like she was fishing.

  One line went taut, then the other. They had hold of them.

  Velvet continued to explore the shell. It was about an acre in size, plenty of room for all the settlers and then some. She worked her way to the front and watched the back of the turtle’s head as it slowly bobbed backward and forward with its motion. Watching it made her feel slightly queasy, so she looked past it.

  The sand on the horizon was moving in concentric circles, almost too slowly to detect, like the gradual motion of a clock’s hands. The wild country was dotted with clusters of wagons and tents, but nothing as large as Feldspar had been. She saw an oasis far to the east, perhaps the one that Carmine and Bertilak had talked about. She saw the canyons to the west, their original destination. There were patches of green scrub dotting the landscape, belying the desert as a lifeless place. Birds winged in the distance.

  Vacuo could look beautiful, it turned out, when looked at from above.

  And there, in the distance, a four-level pyramidal structure rose up above the desert: Shade Academy.

  She didn’t feel the same way looking at it as when she thought of Beacon Tower, but she had been living there for more than a year, and the familiarity was reassuring. She even missed it, she supposed.

  Velvet’s Scroll buzzed on her belt. She grabbed it and saw Coco’s picture. She answered.

  “Hey,” Velvet said. “I guess we’re close enough to Shade’s CCT tower to get a signal.”

  “It’s … weak down here, but hopefully … enough.” Coco’s voice was breaking up.

  Velvet hurried back to the lines she had tossed over. A woman’s head appeared over the edge of the shell. Velvet reached down and helped her climb up.

  “I’ve got it.” The woman pushed away Velvet’s hand as soon as she was standing on the shell and walked away from her.

  “You’re welcome,” Velvet said. I only climbed up here and tossed you a rope to save your life and everything.

  Uh-oh, Velvet thought.

  She looked over and saw more people emerging from the dust below, ascending by holding on to the rope and walking up the side slowly. They were arguing and complaining, not acting at all like people who were in the midst of a miraculous rescue.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” A red-haired woman stretched a hand out. Amaranth again, and her s
on, in a sling wrapped to her back.

  Velvet took her hand and pulled her up.

  “You okay?” Velvet asked.

  “Pffpt,” Amaranth said. She unwrapped Ash from her back. “Wasn’t it enough that I carried you inside me for nine months? I wish you’d hurry and carry your own weight.”

  Velvet’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Uh, Coco? Everything okay down there?”

  Coco cursed at her. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I guess Fox came back with Edward,” Velvet said.

  “What … you say that?” Coco asked.

  “He’s not?”

  “Haven’t seen them yet.”

  “The folks up here are kind of moody,” Velvet said.

  “They’re outright fighting down here,” Coco said.

  “If Edward isn’t back, what’s making everyone act up like this again?”

  “It could just be the stress of facing a deadly sandstorm and the prospect of climbing to the top of a mythic beast,” Coco said. “I mean, that’s kind of putting me on edge.”

  Velvet looked out onto the horizon again. There was another dust cloud out there, coming from the south, back the way they’d come.

  “I think we have a situation developing,” Velvet said.

  “Another one? What else?”

  Velvet snapped a photo with her Scroll and sent it to Coco.

  “Another sandstorm?” she asked.

  A moment passed. Then Slate came on the phone with Coco. “Storms don’t move like that,” Slate said. “Looks like a Blind Worm to me.”

  The fear in Slate’s voice was unlike anything Velvet had yet heard from the leader.

  Something leaped out of the small cloud—a long, black, spiky worm thing, with a fiery red eye in the center of its head, which also featured a circular maw with razor-sharp teeth.

  So, not blind, then. But it was the largest Grimm she had ever seen, easily as wide as a Nevermore from wing to wing and the length of six Goliaths.

  The Blind Worm landed back in the sand, causing another cloud to ripple out. It then continued to burrow toward them—toward the largest source of negative emotions for miles around.

  “Get up here!” Velvet said. “Get everyone up here now!”